


Tunnel Vision

by PRllNCE



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Action, Angst, Fix-It, Height Differences, In Character, M/M, POV First Person, Pining, Plot, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 16:32:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9132364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PRllNCE/pseuds/PRllNCE
Summary: [CHAPTER 9-10 SPOILERS]The Brotherhood is on the verge of crumbling.After the devastating loss of Altissia and their beloved Oracle, the three young retainers and their charge find themselves overcome with grief. But as Noctis has become the only remaining hope left for their people, they have no choice but to carry on and leave their anguish behind. It proves to be too challenging for Noctis however, as he completely shuts down like a broken machine, effectively pushing his friends away.With each passing week, Noctis locks himself up tighter and tigher until his ever loyal Gladiolus has enough and attempts to force him out of his shell. But Noctis refuses the tough love and the two develop a seething tension despite Gladio's overwhelming wish to close the distance between them. As the train slowly snakes its way toward their final stops, he realizes he will need another way to prove his undying love and loyalty for his fractured King before it's too late.





	

**Author's Note:**

> there's no gettin offa this train we're on

The steady clicking and clacking of the train seemed to merge with the restless tapping of my finger on the armrest. They all moved to one beat, as if part of the same mechanism. Similarly, the world outside the window became a mesh; unfocused and separate.

   It ticked me off more than I could describe.

   I didn't want 'unfocused', and the more it aggravated me the more undefined things became. Try as I might I couldn't put my frustration into words--barely even actions--and it only served to further fuel these frustrations, making my surroundings feel like some disconnected, sepia-toned fantasy from Prompto's camera reel. Only, it was happening right now, in this train and on the other side in the ever-shifting scenery flashing by. Yes, it was unfortunate, maddening and a whole lot of hell, but reality was going to keep happening and there we were, confined to these cars with mere hours away from grabbing destiny by the balls. And what were we doing? Sitting on our asses, waiting, like lambs to the slaughter. Nothing more, nothing less.

   We wouldn't even have gotten to this point without all the sacrifices made; now was the time to swallow the grief born from them and go on the offense, or we would have to call 'too late' and render each and every one of those sacrifices meaningless.

   I stopped my incessant tapping, clenching my jaw as tension rose with the silence. Involuntarily my eyes moved toward the other end of the train car to rest on Noct's vulnerable frame rocking along to the rumbling of the engine. From here he might as well have been a doll; there was no presence to him, as if his very soul had just walked up and left. I had been holding my breath, I then realized, and heaved a sigh as I reclined in my seat. My thoughts kept spinning with no end in sight.

   I was the King's shield. I was the one sworn to protect him with my life. But right now there was no enemy for me to pummel, no projectile to deflect; there was just nothing tangible there for me to battle. There was nothing but His Sulkiness and his own mentality. Solemnly I bit my lower lip in an attempt to calm my nerves as my mind wandered again to one very foreseeable outcome: he was going to march to his death. And by extension, everyone else's.

   Suddenly I wanted to punch something. It didn't matter what as long as it hurt a ton and left a massive, gaping hole. But all I could do was sit there. Sit there... and wait.

   A breath later I was met with a deafening screech, and forcibly shot forward into the seat in front of me. Blindsided, I squeezed the armrest for support as the car filled with exclamations and startled murmurs, the collected fear rising fast over the impending halt. It had been so sudden, I half expected us to teeter off the rails.

   I gathered my balance and stood to get my bearings, noting that my comrades were still safe in their seats, albeit jarred. Hurrying down the narrow aisle I swiftly made it to their side only to realize I had been wrong about one thing.

   "Where's Noct?" I asked.

   At some point between me taking my eyes off of him and now, he really had gotten up and left. It hadn't been too long ago so he was surely safe, yet I still found my anger rising in a variety of ways, several of which were emotions I couldn't even define.

   "Uh... I don't know," confessed Prompto with a hint of guilt. I didn't fault him for letting our charge out of sight when I'd done the same, but I must have still looked cross.

   "He should still be nearby," Iggy reassured, raising his voice over the caterwaul. "It would appear something--or someone--is interfering with the train. We ought to investigate the cause."

   "He's not answering his phone," Prompto unhelpfully put in.

   In an attempt to bite off his concern and keep it off my mind, I shrugged him off saying "He's around here," and left it at that. Tried to leave it at that. The anger staggered. I clicked my tongue. "I'll get his ass over here," I conceded. "You two check on the engineers."

   With that, I began trudging past the bewildered passengers. Behind me I caught Prompto's voice gently encouraging the incapacitated Iggy and felt a twinge in my chest just as the door slid shut behind me. I balled my hands into fists and grinded one against the other, letting out a breathy sigh before carrying on further down.

   He wasn't in the next car, or the one after that. How far could he have gone? For a minute I thought he might have gone into one of the compartments to lie down, so I went through them one by one, offering scattered excuses whenever I found someone else inside. Then feeling like a complete idiot, I made my way to the last car with rising disquiet in my chest.

   We slammed into each other at the door, causing Noct to fall right on his ass. A relief so overwhelming it startled me silent washed over me.

   "What's going on?" he asked while sluggishly getting to his feet.

   "Train's stopping. We know as much as you do."

   I threw a quick glance at his pockets.

   "Keep your phone on," I said, sounding more admonishing than I intended.

   Noct's eyes thinned somewhat. He defiantly maintained eye contact with me as he fished through his pocket, no doubt certain he never turned off his phone, but came to a sudden stop. He tensed up, started patting down his trousers and jacket, those deep blue orbs now wide with confusion. All I could do was tiredly shift my position and swallow another sigh.

   "You've gotta be kidding me right now."

   Now his phone was missing too. Kind of a tricky thing to find compared to an entire person, but just like Noct it couldn't be that far away.

   "I don't know where I could've lost it."

   "Pull yourself together," I told him. I could see how Noct bit down at my words but I didn't bother to rein myself in. "You can't even keep track of yourself, much less your things."

   "Get off my back," he muttered half-heartedly.

   His eyes got that shine to them again, that gloss of wetness suggesting he was about to cry even though there shouldn't be any tears left to shed. I indignantly furrowed my brow at my first impulse: to hold him tight and shield him with warmth. That wasn't going to help him, or me, or anyone.

   "Yeah, well, seems like you're stuck with me," I scoffed. "There's no time to look for your phone right now so just stay close."

   That was when we collided. By which I mean both the train and the two of us.

   I jolted forward to the sound of banshee-wailing machinery, finding Noct sandwiched between myself and the wall. Waiting for the impact to die down, we pressed ourselves tightly against it and held on. The surface felt cool against my fingers, a contrast to Noct's warm, unsteady breath at my chest. Everything fell silent around us.

   A moment of nothing but a beating pulse in my ear went by before we gathered ourselves again, and I was just pulling myself back when I felt a tug at my jacket. Noct pulled me in, his face hidden behind his long fringe. We were close enough that I could feel it on my skin and it tickled slightly. A pleasant fragrance reached me and my next unwanted impulse was to lean down and take it in. I straightened up.

   "What?" I barked impatiently.

   I detected the tiniest flinch. As I felt Noct's grip loosen, I caught that obstinate look in his eye. Somehow it bothered me on a personal level, but generally it was better than a look of complete emptiness. If I had to be the bad guy for him to crawl out of that emptiness with his own hands, then I'd be one hell of a bad guy.

   "Come on," I urged. "Iggy and Prompto are further up. We've gotta check the damage."

   Keeping Noct at my back, I squeezed through the same door I'd entered from, throwing a look back to make sure he followed. His gaze was fixed on the confused and frightened passengers filling the seats. Few lifted their heads when we passed. I let the feeling of discomfort in my gut propel me forward as I quickened my pace and moved from car to car. Judging by the outside view it would be a while yet until nightfall, but daemons weren't the only danger.

   Further ahead I could conclude that there weren't any major discrepancies between the different cars; it's not like the shock had been so hard that we'd been shot off the rails and tilted. There was no glass scattered on the floor and the civilians seemed physically alright. But the nose had taken the full hit, so there was no telling how that situation looked.

   When we made it to the other end the door wouldn't open at first so I figured it was jammed. Just another aspect to brighten my day. I cracked my neck and exhaled before giving the asshole a good nudge--and by that, I mean I blasted through it with tackling force. It crashed to the floor and we entered to an alarmed cry.

   "Hey, there they are!" said Prompto.

   "Nice scream," I teased. It felt like years had been taken off my lifespan from my pointless worrying.

   Next to him stood Iggy, safe and sound as well, along with the anxious engineers. I stepped over the fallen door and approached them with Noct in tow.

   "You guys made it," I said as my hand settled on Iggy's shoulder. I felt his surprise through my fingers from the sudden touch and stiffened subconsciously. "How's it look?"

   "Well," Iggy slowly started. "The damage seems relatively superficial, so we wouldn't say it's impossible to get this train moving again with those conditions. However..." he trailed off and tiredly pushed his sunglasses up. "We still can't move."

   "And why's that?"

   "What did we hit?" Noct asked curiously. Leaning over the controls, he peered out the window, tiny creases forming on his brow almost shyly. Just the way he ever so slightly expressed his confusion with those big blue eyes had me up in arms all of a sudden. Impulse number three reared its head; to gently brush the fringe out of his face so I could connect my eyes with his and see more, look deeper. But instead I tore them away from him--because I knew way better, I kept telling myself--and examined the window.

   Cracks formed like spider webs all over the glass and it was hard enough to discern anything as it was, but now that he mentioned it I couldn't actually see anything at all; we must have been lodged into something big.

   "Guess we have to take a look for ourselves," I said. Giving the shaken engineers a look, I told them to stay there and keep safe. One of them threw their hands in the air. "I'm not going _anywhere_ ," she huffed.

   Leaving Iggy to Prompto, I grabbed Noct by the collar of his jacket and pulled him away from the window, making him resemble a kitten being held by the scruff. Once we got a good few steps away I could have sworn he hissed too.

   "Don't touch me!" he said as he squirmed in my grip.

   " _Sorry_ ," I enunciated. "I only take orders from my _king_."

   "And I don't take orders from _assholes_ ," he retorted, drilling his eyes into mine.

   I curiously raised a brow. At least there was some fire to that opposition.

   The controls weren't completely fried but we still had to pry the doors open before we stepped out. The engineers would probably get everything back up and working in a bit but we still needed to roll up our sleeves and fix the roadblock.

   "So is it a roadblock... or a railblock?" Prompto asked.

   "It's a dragon," Noct declared.

   My jaw dropped. Prompto snapped a photo.

   We stood in the shade of a massive beast made of claws and teeth, its webbed wings resting against sunset-coloured scales. The horns, curved and pitch black, made it resemble a flying behemoth, only its nose was shaped like a beak and let out puffs of chilly air at regular intervals, making its fat chest rise and sink to a slow beat.

   My hand gently let go of Noct and went to my head as I scrutinized every inch of the monstrosity in awe.

   "Uhh... Do you think it's... asleep?" Prompto stuttered.

   Noct shrugged, but didn't seem able to tear his eyes away from it either.

   "Well, its eyes are closed and it's breathing heavily, so I'd say yeah... it's sleeping." He slowly leaned towards Prompto. "For now."

   "Hey! Stop it, man, I'm serious!"

   "Seriously afraid."

   "Are we seeing the same thing right now? Don't tell me you're not at least a little spooked?"

   "If you yell that loudly you're gonna wake it up."

   "Ramming a train into it didn't seem enough to wake it up," Iggy interjected. "... Perhaps it responds better to a shrill enough yelp."

   "My voice is _not_ shrill!" Prompto objected, his voice notably cracking.

   "You just confirmed he was talking about you now."

   This banter felt so nostalgic it completely sucker-punched me into a separate realm. Looking at the beast slumbering before us it reminded me of all those times we'd gone hunting for dangerous creatures, throwing ourselves headfirst into danger and laughing as we made it through, unscathed or not.

   Thinking back on this, I realized what had just happened. I peered at Noct, too lost in my thoughts to hear what he was saying but I recognized the way he teased his friend and the glimmer in his eye after each response. The way Iggy joined in, the corners of his lips rising ever so slightly as he delivered a snarky comment. Noct's laughter hidden behind the back of his hand. He didn't look sullen in the least for the first time in weeks and I felt my chest tighten in a way I didn't necessarily dislike. Maybe the sight of the beast had taken him back to that time as well?

   Suddenly I just wanted to go back in time and cover those small hands with mine, to envelop him entirely until no sadness or hurt could hope to reach him. With my hands, my arms, my lips...

   But our eyes met and the glimmer was gone. In its place was cold recognition. I felt my nostrils flare and huffed, turning my back to the moment I wasn't quite ready to leave.

   "What are we looking at here?" Iggy inquired. Bless his insurmountable patience.

   I described it as best as I could and we concluded that it definitely was a dragon, we'd never seen the type before, it was huge, and probably killable. So we'd have to just get cracking, huh? That, I could do.

   "It's sleeping, so we have the element of surprise on our side," said Iggy. "However... Taking into consideration its size and the train beside it with all the passengers on board, fighting it may not be our best chance."

   "So what do you suggest?" I asked. Just let me kill something, I thought to myself.

   "Killing it wouldn't necessarily solve our problem," he explained. "If we slay it where it lies, we go nowhere."

   "But we can't exactly go around it."

   "In simple terms: the dragon is in our way, so we make the dragon move."

   I gave it another look; it really was quite a big girl. Getting it to move without having it engage the area aggressively didn't seem possible; something with teeth like that wasn't likely to be friendly, especially if disturbed during its nap. The only thing I could think of was to wound it and that had been taken off the table.

   I grunted to myself, more frustrated than I'd have liked to admit due to everything else driving me mad lately.

   "So it has to _want_ to move," said Noct.

   "What do you propose?" asked Iggy.

   Noct shrugged, suddenly put on the spot. He tried to act nonchalant but I could tell he was uncomfortable from the way he squeezed his arm.

   "I don't know," he mumbled, his eyes darting around as if searching for an answer. "Why would anyone want to move?"

   Everyone fell silent.

   "I'd run away if that thing tried to eat me," Prompto declared with a deadpan expression.

   "And where are we gonna find something _this_ runs away from?" I asked.

   "At night," Noct offered. The familiar daemon chill went down my spine and I felt something in me snap.

   "That's not an option," said Iggy.

   "You're damn right it's not. We stay here until nightfall, these people aren't gonna stand a chance. Whatever's fearsome enough to send this thing flying for the hills, daemon or not, is only gonna mean a bigger problem for us and a higher risk getting everyone here _killed_."

   "I _know_ that!" Noct hissed, turning his back on me. "It's not like I want these people to die. I'm not gonna let anyone die." He shot me a glance over his shoulder then and swallowed visibly, his alluring lashes glistening as his eyes seemed to well up. They pierced right through me like the sharpest of javelins. " _Anyone_ ," he articulated with a strong whisper before he stormed off, leaving behind an air so awkward and so thick that I could have banged my head against it. It was a tempting notion.

   But strongest of all was my impulse to undo whatever I'd done to make him look at me with such unfiltered agony.

   At that moment I asked myself if all I'd done was make him spiral further down and fall out of reach. A King would stand up, step over his grief and take matters into his own hands, but as I looked down and examined my own, a thought reached me: the King was out of commission and couldn't turn himself back on. He had no hands with which to hold this burden. How could I fix it? How could I help _him_ fix it?

   I had tried. For these past weeks I had given him space and time until we ran out of both. What could I give him now that would get that light back in his eyes before it was too late?

   A different pair of eyes burned into the back of my neck and I knew they belonged to Prompto. But as I turned to look at him he seemed more sad than cross.

   "We'll keep thinking," said Iggy. "Head back inside with Noct. Even should we figure out a solution to our problem, we still need the train to dislodge itself from the dragon."

   I was about to protest, but Iggy, anticipating my reaction ahead of time, sternly held up a finger.

   "Gladio." His voice softened somewhat. I couldn't stand him when he used that tone, and anxiously rolled my eyes. "He needs to know you're with him."

   Lowering my gaze at his words, I withheld my retort. Prompto carefully approached with his beloved camera and held it up to me, beckoning me to look. I figured he was just trying to cheer me up and all but I still wasn't feeling up to looking over his daily snapshots again. He wouldn't let me sit this one out though; he made sure to elbow me pretty hard as he brought up the screen closer to me.

   I blinked.

   My heart skipped a beat.

   The photo itself was nicely framed and devoid of strong filtering, the natural lighting more than enough to fill it with colours vibrant and clear. I had to say though that the most appealing part was the sight of Noct's pale skin against the pastel sky and his oceanic eyes absently resting on something in the distance. His features had been captured so perfectly, it felt like I could reach him from here.

   "What do you think he's looking at?" Prompto asked.

   I pursed my lips and shrugged.

   "I don't know. How should I know?"

   He looked at me, as if scanning me for answers, before swiping the screen for the next photo. It was Noct again, leaning his face into his hands with a wistful look in his eyes just like before. It was a rare look--more peaceful than I'd seen him with in recent days--and it had hints of longing sprinkled all around.

   "When was this taken?" I asked, my voice low and rumbling with care.

   "Today."

   My brows shot up in disbelief.

   "Today," I repeated. Prompto didn't answer and just swiped the screen.

   Before me was a zoomed-out version of the previous photo. That gaze of yearning perfectly connected to an unaware figure in the foreground, a figure shaped like me who wore my clothes, shared my name and was also _me_. I couldn't see Prompto's face but I could practically feel him giving me that knowing, encouraging grin. He was too friendly and touchy-feely for his own good.

   This time I was the one who jumped when a hand descended on my shoulder.

   "Nobody's asking you to make peace so fast," said Iggy, giving me a gentle squeeze. "But I suggest you open a door for him; I think there's something he wants to get off his chest, and it's for your ears only."

   "I..." I started, unable to formulate a sentence. My vision trailed off, first resting on some invisible spot on the grass as my thoughts struggled to stay coherent, then moving towards the train and Noct's disappearing frame.

   "We'll let you know should anything change," Iggy assured, suddenly all business.

   With a breathy sigh I straightened myself up and rolled my shoulders back.

   "I'm not gonna be his therapist though," I said, dripping with nonchalance.

   "You guys are more similar than you'd wanna admit," Prompto then outrageously claimed. I cocked my head so hard that my neck cracked.

   "What's that supposed to mean?"

   "It _means_ ," Iggy interrupted, "that he has heard your concerns, and now it's your turn. Listen. Nothing more, nothing less."

   I felt another array of sighs barrel through me but I held them all back and nodded a couple of times, pushing my hands against my hips in a stance of resignation.

   "Yeah... Yeah, I hear you..."

   "Good."

   Iggy turned his heel but stopped midway as if forgetting something. I gave him an inquiring look despite knowing he couldn't catch it.

   "And keep your phone on."

   A frown quickly formed as I looked from one to the other. "My phone is on," I assured while sticking my hand down the usual pocket to prove it to them.

   It wasn't there.

   I checked my other pockets. I checked every crevice in my clothes. It wasn't anywhere.

   "Where the hell..." I mumbled under my breath.

   For the first time since this storm hit I was happy Iggy couldn't see my face; my cheeks were getting hotter by the second and all I could think of was my idiot self telling Noct that he couldn't keep track of himself.

   "Just..." I stopped and rubbed my temples for a second. "Just come get me if something happens while we're gone. Alright? Alright."

   And with that I hastily turned my back on them with heavy, flustered steps, trampling a good amount of grass throughout the plain on my way back to the cars and an even more embarrassing encounter with the one person I loved more than life.

   The slumbering dragon and the oncoming chill of night suddenly felt like the least of my problems.


End file.
